TCM Podcasts - Teacher Created Materials

TCM Podcasts - Teacher Created Materials

The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History

Wow! That was my first impression of the beginning of my museum tour in Washington DC. First of all, all of the Smithsonian Museums are absolutely free! No money needed and there are too many to visit in such a short amount of time. I had the evenings to sight see and took advantage every chance I could. It was my first trip to Washington. The museum had hundreds and hundreds of fossils, an exhibit tracing the evolution of man and other creatures as well. There were even a few live exhibits on display when I was there. This museum was my favorite because there were so many great thngs to see under one roof. The tour began with the earliest of lifeforms and progressed through time to the present. I was amazed at the number of interacive exhibits. It was a great time for all ages.

Food Science Workshop in Washington DC

I was offered a unique opportunity to participate in a science workshop being conducted by the FDA, NSTA and Maryland University this summer. In addition to the great food and accommodations provided by the hosts for this workshop, I was also able to visit some interesting places while in Washington DC. The purpose of the workshop was to educate science and consumer health teachers in the areas of food safety, nutrition and production. We began with listening to some lectures about food and how it is related to science. From there we spent every day in a new place learning even more than the day before. Our focus was on bacteria and how food is affected by bacteria and poor safety conditions. We learned how processing plants handle food and work to keep bacteria in check throughout the process of handling and preparing food. We spent two days in the labs at Maryland University conducting a series of experiments designed for middle and high school students. Upon returning to the classroom, we will teach the material to our students and other science faculty in our county.

New River Gorge Canopy Tour

We were off again on another field trip. However, this trip was not quite like any of the others. We visited Class VI River Runners where we met with Dave Arnold, the owner, who spoke to our group about sustainable tourism and gave us and introduction to the facility which features a Tree Top Canopy Tour. The tour began with safety first as our group attended ground school which prepared us for our journey. The canopy tour consisted of ten zip lines and five bridges which we maneuvered through for about three and a half hours as we were guided by our two well equipped guides. The zip lines were an average of seven hundred feet long and some platforms were as high as one hundred twenty five feet above the ground! This was an awesome adventure! Just exhilarating enough to get your pumping, but terrifying enough to keep you on the ground. While zipping through the canopy of the New River Gorge, we were introduced to the native plant life as the guides pointed out and gave descriptions of the surrounding forests as we passed through them. Our tour ended with a repelling adventure as we lowered ourselves from the last platform to the ground. A truly memorable experience.

Grandview State Park

Grandview became a natioanl river in 1990 when it was included as part of the New River. The views were breathtaking and captivating to see as we stopped at the main outlook in the park which was 1400 feet above the river offering a clear view of the town of Quinnomont. We were joined by Dr. Dave Matchen of Concord University's Geoglogy department who led a discussion and lecture revealing the spectacular geomorphology of the New River Gorge as it can be seen from Grandview. Upon conclusion of the geomorphology lesson, we explored a couple of the many trails found within the surroundings of the park. As we manuevered the wooded trails we looked at rock formations along the cliffsides and used the unique characteristics of the rock formations to infer about the origin and physical features of the landscape in Grandview.

Sandstone Visitor Center National Park Services

Sandstone National Park Visitor Center, which has been open since 2003, is nestled along the New River and practices green energy conservation techniques in order to sustain and conserve the energy used at the center. National Park Service Rangers at the Sandstone Visitor Center demonstrated an experiment exploring the watershed of the New River using water and KoolAid for a colorful effect. It was interesting to see how humans have affected the environment around the New Riverthrough exploring the natural and cultural history of the New River. We viewed a twelve minute video program on the New River and even shopped in the gift shop. In addition to the wonderful view from the center,there was a vivid display of wildlife and plant life to admire. Several interactive displays were placed throughout the center showing how things such as pollution and human interaction have impacted the wildlife and water supply in the watershed along the New River.

Pipestem State Park, West Virginia

Our trip to Pipestem started out more adventurous than we had anticipated. Susan and I kind of missed our ride to the park and had to scramble to follow and try to catch up to the rest of the group in her car. It was a little panicky at first, but we did manage to catch up at the tram with our group and enjoyed a nice ride down into the park where we relaxed for a while before returning to the top for a nice dinner.Some of us skipped rocks across the water, others walked along the edge of the water, some were brave enough to tackle the swings and the rest of us just sat and took it all in enjoying the scenery and fresh air. Afterwards we headed back to the dorms.

Geographic Alliance Summer Institue

This particular week was like an entire summer wrapped up into one! We learned alot, played alot, and shared a lot throughout the week we spent a Concord University. The dorms reminded us of college life many years back and helped us get into the role of student rather than teacher. We worked in the classroom learninig more about the themes of geography and geographic thought as we discussed some of the readings for the course.Our classroom work was continued as we toured various places along the New River and learned about geography. We had some late nights, great food and returned to the dorm exhausted on more that one occasion. All in all it was a great week and the most memorable of my summer journeys.

Indianapolis, Indianna CBC for NGS

Put together forty or so teachers, several Geographic Alliance Coordinators, teacher consultants, committee members and mix them with some very professional teams and you get an enormous amount of learning and sharing. This was my experience in attending the capacity building course for the National Geographic Society early this summer. We met for four days to learn about strategic planning, evaluation, and program design from some very knowledgable people. The course is still ongoing and myself and the other three members of my team are busy keeping up and learning as we go. We are now beginning to apply the elements we learned in Indianapolis to our own individual alliances in hopes of furthering goegraphy awareness. Since this was a national meeting, we were in the company of alliance members from all around the country including Peurto Rico. It was priceless to talk and interact with other alliance members from far away places and realize they too have the same goals, ambitions, concerns and frustrations.

My very busy summer continued with a week long summer institute for Art and the Humanities. About fifty teachers from around West Virginia and Virginia met in Morgantown West Virginia where we were exposed to various expamples of art ranging from suculptures to abstract peices of art. We worked in teams to design lesson plans integrating art into social studies and language arts. Our groups visited the art library at WVU and listened to several professors from various disciplines propose some ideas about how to go about integrating art. We looked at some political artwork, religious artwork and some biographical art as well. Our highlight of the week was our visit to Pitsburgh for a tour of the Carnegie Museum of Art. A docent guided our group through many works of art lending exciting insight into the artists' thoughts and beliefs. We had a wonderful lunch and afterwards we visited the museum of natural history which is where I spent a great deal of my time. The exhibits were unbelievable and hard to discribe without seeing them up close and in person. I loved the Egyptian exhibit as well as the fossil collection. Their dinosaur collection is one of the best I have ever seen with seven or more life size skeletons on display.